Kokie Spring Trio

PR sample provided for review

 

Today I've got three polishes from Kokie to celebrate the arrival of spring. Up here on the mountain where I live, the weather is still wavering between winter and spring, with plenty of snow still piled up (about three feet of it outside my back windows, for instance) but also some warmer days when it's comfortable to go out without multiple layers under my outerwear. Before too long, it'll be mud season, when the rains come and things get dreary for a few weeks. Then I'll really need pretty polishes like these. Left to right: Mystic Mauve, Celestial, and Blossom. (Yes, when the caps are tightened down, the elephant doesn't always like to be front and center; that I can look at this photo and not strongly want to reshoot is a sign I've made a lot of progress with letting go of my perfectionism over the years. Which has nothing to do with this post but my mind, it wanders where it will.)

 

I started with Blossom, a pale peachy pink crelly. Two coats gave my nails a slightly better than natural look, a nice palate cleanser. This is on the sheer side of crelly, but is buildable and self-levels nicely.

 

 

Of course I had to experiment with layering Blossom. I painted my tips with Kokie Iced Out, one of the polishes the brand sent me this past winter, and topped with two coats of Blossom for a bit of a twist on a classic French mani. This approach nicely took care of hiding the slight yellow cast my natural nails seem to have regardless of how careful I am to use base coat under polish.

 

 

Celestial has a clear base densely packed with small metallic glitter accented with a sprinkling of small holo glitter. I used three coats for full coverage, though two coats probably would have worked if I'd made them a touch thinner. I did add clear topcoat, too, though this wasn't especially bumpy. This color is a bit of a chameleon, sometimes looking more silver, sometimes more platinum or even light bronze, but it always looked nice and sparkly yet somehow also subtle (though my idea of subtle may be skewed by having used so much bright color and big glitters over the years).

 

 

Here's Celestial showing off its colors in regular room light:

 

Mystic Mauve is a warm purple creme, opaque in two coats.

 

 

You know I had to try layering Celestial over Mystic Mauve. I added one coat of Celestial plus clear topcoat. One could argue that Celestial is too glitter-filled to be a good topper, but I liked the combination.

 

 

Before I put these polishes away, I tried combining all three into one dotted pond mani, starting with two coats of Blossom, dots of Mystic Mauve themselves dotted with Celestial, then two more coats of Blossom. I think instead of "pond" I got "petri dish" but decided to share it anyway because experiments are good even when they don't quite turn out as hoped.

 

These shades (along with dozens of others) are available at Sally Beauty stores for $4.99 per 16ml bottle. They're also online on the Sally Beauty and Kokie websites.

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The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.